The population of emotionally disturbed and mentally retarded adults receiving residential treatment in public mental hospitals, mental health centers, and community facilities is one of our most serious social problems. Over 11 years of research and development have resulted in new assessment procedures for continuous objective measurement of staff and patient functioning in such settings. These new procedures are documented to have greater reliability and utility for a variety of purposes needed to improve the effectiveness of residential treatment programs. The current project will familiarize mental health staff with the new procedures, and result in their implementation in four treatment units in two different mental institutions. The design of the implementation procedures will evaluate two different methods of training staff to use the procedures, and two different methods of continuing consultation in order to provide the most cost-effective approach in future nationwide dissemination. Once the assessment systems are installed, it would be possible to implement a treatment program that has proven to be nearly four times as cost-effective as alternatives for some groups of mental patients.